I thought that CassCams.com was going to be an interesting new
camsite to review, but after looking more closely I think it doesn't
appeal to me much. Hopefully they get it going but at the moment
it seems there are too many things which are not quite right. They
do have some good ideas though so I hope it takes off.

When
you first visit the site it is a pleasantly designed typical camsite
showing a range of thumbnails, but often no Live Performers. They
do have performers online sometimes but it will be easiest to find them
by following them on twitter at
@CassCamsModels.
They are tweeting, it looks like manually, when they have chatrooms go
live.

Now the site is actually UK based, more on that later, but I presume
that most of the hosts I'm seeing online there are from all over the
world. They have been actively approaching performers via twitter,
myspace, bebo and so on to invite them to use the new system.
Searching around a bit I find invitations from as long as two years ago,
which means this site is not as new as I at first thought.

Initially though it was called "casscams.co.uk" emphasizing the
British part, but I guess they decided to be more generic and now it's
CassCams.com, though as you go through the site you'll still see plenty
of things about England like money listed in "£", that's British Pounds,
instead of $.

Over on the right hand side of the screen is a comprehensive set of
category filters with pretty sliders to let you select things like age
range, price and ethnicity. Good ideas but of course a little
pointless until they build up a larger range of online models.
Though as the sliders work even for the offline hosts it would help you
to find the suitable ones to favorite.

When
you do find someone online then clicking through into free chat works
fine and gives you a simple video/text chat window. You can go in
as an anonymous guest, or signup for a free account using email only.
It does need a verification email but no credit card is required to get
the free account. The account gives you a text chat nickname.

Once you are in the video and text chat screen there is no indication
of other guests online though so you can't get any group chat feel going
really like MFC etc, which maybe ok as there doesn't seem to be a focus
on Tipping. Yes there is a Tip button, but I don't get the feeling
this is the main focus at the site. Prices for different types of
chat are posted; like "2.00CassCoins/Minute for Private Chat", or
3/minute for true private. e.g. with no peeking.

CassCoins
are £1 each, so basically you are paying 2 British Pounds a minute for a
normal private which works out to $3.10/minute. Medium pricing and
probably reasonable for first world chathosts, if you happen to find one
you like. You can buy credits using Visa/Mastercard/JCB/Diners via
CCBill which is representing "Cassettari Enterprises Limited",
the owners of casscams.com I suppose.

I did notice though that the CCBill form said "Payment Options:
£10.00(GBP) for 365 days" which I hope is just a reflection that
CCBill is more set up for membership sites, but on the other hand it may
mean your credits expire after a year.

As there were so few chathosts online I didn't really get a chance to
chat properly with any, but did see a few nice things about the view.
Firstly there is a very nice idea is that you can control the volumne of
music separate from the audio from the chathost.

For that to work I presume the host must have an interface on her
screen to choose the song to play, a great idea that I presume would
make much clearer playback. I'm looking forward to seeing that
working. Lots of viewers will be pleased to be able to adjust the
performers' voice volume vs. the music volume depending on the situation
I'm sure.

The credits purchased can be used towards either tipping or a variety
of different show types, from "Nude" which is a group chat, through
Private to True Private. There is also a voyuer mode called
Peeking which is not allowed in True Private. Hosts can set their
own prices for each level but they are around 2 or 3 credits a minute.

So far a typical small cam site then which is struggling to get
started with the chicken-and-egg situation of not enough hosts, not
enough viewers. Some things do concern me more than with other
such sites though.

Firstly two of the pages linked from the footer, the ever present
Privacy Policy and 2257 are just full of filler text. "Lorem
ipsum..." That's not a good sign in my book and possibly
represents a too-busy webmaster. For a site launched more than a
year ago I think this should have been completed.

Secondly on the Model payout details, and more
on that later, one of the payout options is PayPal. As we all
know PayPal forbids any transactions for goods of an erotic nature so
therefore camgirls are naturally wary, they know that accepting money
for shows via PayPal can get their account frozen. Is accepting a
payment from a company for camshows any different? I would think
not so this is a big risk for a chathost and the fact that CassCams
offers only PayPal, and not the more adult friendly Payoneer or other
alternatives implies they are not well up with the rest of the adult
industry trends.

In conclusion then a small site with some good idea, but in need of
more camgirls and some time to fixup the site and be more hooked in with
where the adult webcam industry is now.

They are advertising 60% payouts sounds great, of course how much that equals in $ or £ is
doing to depend on traffic which at the moment is weak. As a new
site they are quite reasonably ok with you doing split cam, and I saw an
admin even advising one host on how to get her show she is doing
elsewhere recorded at casscams so she can get paid for it.

Yes, you can record videos and sell them. But not images.
You can post gallery pictures but although you can set a price for
entrance into the gallery it is a one-off price, not a monthly or
per-picture price.

Different prices can be set for the various categories of chat from
True Private, Private (with peeking), Group and Peeking. Most
people are charging 2 or 3 CassCoins/minute for the private and
true-private respectively.

Payouts are by either Paypal, which concerns me as we all know Paypal
thinks poorly of Adult related transactions, Bank transfer or Cheque -
in the UK only. It's not clear to me if you could actually get
paid outside the UK except by Paypal. Maybe they should look into
Payoneer?

Not sure what software they are using but like the one at
streamate you can either broadcast directly
from a webpage, or you can use a Flash Encoder which makes a more
efficient upload but takes more techie fiddling on your PC. They
do provide a quite clear manual on how to use it though.

The minimum payout is 100 pounds, which is about $150 and quite a
high minimum for a small site. Most hosts want to get in an
initial payment quickly with a new site so that can see that they are
actually paying and there are no delays with sending payment.

Photo gallery entry price is a one-time life-time payment, so not a
charge per picture set or a monthly fan club type of payment.

Easy to signup as a chathost though there is 5 pages to fill in they
are quite simple and straight forward. Personal account info,
things for your bio, price setting, though there is no guidance here as
to what are reasonable prices at this site, and after an activation
email is clicked you can log into the performer area; but unlike
chaturbate you can't start broadcasting until your account and ID are
approved. Which is quite reasonable of course.